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Poster: mcloughlin Date: Jan 20, 2007 7:16am
Forum: prelinger Subject: Re: Music in prelinger archive movies - la bamba not public domain?

Yes but the problem is, how are you supposed to know what is public domain and what is not. La Bamba may be easier to know but most of the prelinger music tracks have no vocals and are more like film music, how is anyone supposed to figure out if it is public domain or not. I always thought all the prelinger archives were public domain but now I know they are not and you still have to personally risk infringement using any of them, so really I lost most all interest in trying to use them for anything as I am not about to spend any of my few dollars to send movies off to some expensive lawyer or company to do a public domain search for me on prelinger archive movies so he can tell me what I can use or not from each and every one of the 1000+ archive movies that I was thinking about wanting to use some music track from. I could never afford to probably get even one movie checked out properly, let alone the hundreds I want to use sound clips or music tracks from.
This post was modified by mcloughlin on 2007-01-20 15:16:32

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Poster: Visual16 Date: Jan 20, 2007 8:15am
Forum: prelinger Subject: Re: Music in prelinger archive movies - la bamba not public domain?

Having watched hundreds of these films, finding something recognizable is actually a difficult task. There are actually people out there who think that singing "Happy Birthday to you" is a copyright infringement. I would say if you are really uptight about this, find Richie Valens publisher and ask about form SR licencing for "La Bamba" I don't see how a scratchy optical soundtrack rendition excerpt affects this enormous body of Public Domain footage, in that most of the music is anonymous and we would LOVE TO BUY more of it, but no one even knows who wrote or recorded it. They aren't given credit on the films themselves! I don't believe they are trying to snare anyone into trouble with this, one of the most profound contributions to the entire Internet. I think most people would leave this thread alone but that's my two cents as a private user, not representing this archive...

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Poster: scooter_nyc Date: Feb 12, 2007 6:21am
Forum: prelinger Subject: Re: Music in prelinger archive movies - la bamba not public domain?

Amen. You know, one of the huge problems with the public being generally more aware of copyright issues is that there's a lot of misinformation and assumption floating around out there. Intellectual property is not an easy subject, especially if we're talking about the use of music in films.

To the original poster: if you feel that the use of the song in question is going to get you into some sort of legal trouble on your project, then simply don't use it!

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Poster: MediaWhore Date: Mar 7, 2007 7:48pm
Forum: prelinger Subject: Re: Music in prelinger archive movies - la bamba not public domain?

I have often wondered about this same issue myself. I would suspect that no authority from the prelinger archives has responded to this thread is that since this is a murky area they do not want to get caught in the middle should any legal issues arise. Overall I would think that 99.999% of all this material is perfectly legal but it leaves you wondering about that other .01%